"An Eye for Gold"

One of the things that made Sarah Assbring's debut as El Perro del Mar so compelling back in 2006 was the way it stripped girl-group pop songs down to their barest essentials and used them to express immense inner sadness. Writing the sparest possible arrangements and singing her lyrics in a voice halfway to a sob, she could make the phrase "be-bop-a-lula" sound like more like Anne Sexton than Gene Vincent, yet there was so much emotional specificity that the record never wallowed in pain. Now we’re getting a deluxe reissue, presumably tied to the inclusion of "God Knows (You Gotta Give to Get)" on HBO's "Girls".

It might be suspicious were it not for the depth and quality of the bonus material, which ranges from radio performances to demos without breaking the spell of lustrous heartache. Best among them may be "An Eye for Gold", an unreleased demo that relies on repetition of a handful of lines to create a sort of storybook folk-blues. Over an almost silent guitar strum, Assbring remembers her home "in the woods where the mushrooms grow," as though it’s some fantastical place from a Tolkein novel. But it's that piano that casts the strongest spell. She pounds out a modified lefthand R&B rhythm, reminiscent of Fats Domino, and even though it’s thoroughly denuded of boogie, it remains a solid rock'n'roll allusion that reveals both the depth of her musical vocabulary and the sturdiness of her pop minimalism. It's hard to imagine "An Eye for Gold" sounding quite so curiously affecting in 2006 as it does now.